Shawn Wood (Experiences/Communications Pastor at Seacoast Church) recently asked a group of us this question during a free coaching call:
Does your church have a blog?
And when I had to say no, I felt bad (like, man, I should have thought of this!)
Our Lead Pastor has a blog. Several other staff members have a blog and we link to all of them on our church website but that doesn’t really count.
What about you? Does your church have an official blog?
If so, what do you use it for? How has the response been?
Personally, I have seen a few churches use this tool for different reasons.
- Park Community Church has a blog and it was created for “stories and news”.
- NewSpring Church has a landing page for all their feeds (which is sweet) which lists blogs for KidSpring, Fuse and Groups. It seems that those blogs are all related to news and resources.
- Mars Hill Church has a blog and it seems to be created for discipleship, humor and church news.
I am also wondering, how you measure success in this area?
Dave Anthold says
Unfortunately our church doesn’t have a blog. We tried a couple of years ago, but there wasn’t any commitment to it.
Lifechurch.tv seems to have had great success in this area. Only a few of us blog, but that is our personal stuff more than church stuff. I like the idea of a landing page that aggregates the blogs.
Still more to be done!
Blane Young says
Blogs certainly take a lot of commitment.
I think that y’all made the right call in that it is better to not have a blog than to have a crappy blog.
I looked around LifeChurch.tv’s site and I couldn’t find a link to an official church blog.
I know that they have Swerve but that is really like Craig’s blog (with a little Bobby mixed in).
On August 18th of this year, the moved their Church Online blog (its content) to a Facebook page.
Let me know if I am missing it…
Rodney Olsen says
We’ve just recently started a blog to continue discussion on the themes preached during the Sunday evening services. The pastor is also about to start a blog.
Blane Young says
I would love to check it out, what is the link?
I dig it when pastors have blogs…
Josh says
The church we’ve been attending does not have a blog, nor do I think they ever intend on having one anytime soon. I personally find that saddening. 🙂
Blane Young says
Love your honesty Josh.
Maybe you could suggest it and lead the project?
Chris Huff says
My church has a blog that we use for announcements and upcoming events. We’ve experimented this year on how we want to use it, and we’ve finally decided on one post per event rather than reposting the same events in the weekly announcement post (which we did for quite awhile). I also would like it to be used to highlight various families in the church, and follow up on how events went. But that’s down the line sometime.
Blane Young says
I like that you have a plan!
How have you seen people respond to it?
I am thinking about starting one for our church but am still unsure…
Chris Huff says
Actually, nobody has responded to it at all. But it is starting to pick up some traffic, and a bit of it is local, so that’s great. From time to time, we’ll get a visitor that says they came because they found us online, which is exactly the purpose we have for our site. We’re in a small town, so I don’t expect too much of that, but it’s great when it happens.
Joanna says
My church doesn’t have one, but my campus ministry used one for a while to answer questions we didn’t have time to answer at our talks
Blane Young says
That is a great idea!
I love blogs that have a laser sharp focus…
Do you have a link? I would love to see it.
Joanna says
http://www.omgwhy.net/
Blane Young says
Sweet URL!
Joanna says
All the pink was because it was used in the rest of our marketing, not because I thought it was a pleasant colour to use in webdesign. :p It was more effective in our offline marketing eg. http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/4Hz85kiHZnLbt2_QTIv1DQ?feat=directlink
Blane Young says
Love the doggie t-shirts!
Thanks for sharing!
Joanna says
It is actually a very large dog in a normal people’s shirt. Walking the dog in the shirt around campus turned out to be a very effective promotional option. Normally it is difficult to get people on our campus to take flyers due to bad experiences a lot of students have had with pushy political activists. When we had the dog people were curious enough to not just take the flyers when we handed them out but to approach us.
Blane Young says
That is a great hook.
Sometimes the medium has to change, and in the war of flyers vs/ dogs – dogs seem to always win!
Way to think outside of the box!
Chris Loach says
my pastor does but the church doesn’t. they keep the website and twitter updated pretty often though so that kinda serves as a blog. http://www.newvintage.org
Blane Young says
That is the sweetest website I have ever seen for a strategic partner church!
Mad props…
Are y’all in a twitter community?
We aren’t so it is not reasonable for us to try to create that culture when Facebook is king in Southeast GA.
Matt Ralph says
My church’s blog is used primarily as a tool to report on activities of the church that have already happened (short articles, videos, photos, testimonies) and point people to media of note or interest elsewhere (quotes from books, articles, videos, etc.).
The lead pastor has a blog that he uses to interact with staff and lay leadership and the associate pastor has a blog he rarely updates.
Blane Young says
I love that you ratted out the associate pastor!
Can you post the links? I would love to check them out!
I like the idea/goal behind your church’s blog and if I were to do one for our church, I think that is what I would want the focus to be.
Jason Cooper says
We don’t have an official blog, but recently with our capitol campaign, i set up what is essentially a campaign news blog that we used to publicize the campaign events and post updates on pledges/giving, etc. Works well for linking to facebook and even the frontpage of the website with a “read more” link to the blog entry page… we didn’t enable comments, and only 1 RSS subscriber.
http://onelife.calvarychristianchurch.org/News/News.html
I have a personal one, and our children’s minister did one for a while, but tried to start out with a daily thought for parents, and couldn’t maintain pace…
some young 20 somethings at church suggested we start one… Hopefully this coming year it will be in place, but have to deal with shifting staff roles, some website issues, etc. before can really get going strong on it (including developing a strategy with goals, assignments, schedules, etc.)
Blane Young says
Jason, it seems like you are on the right path.
If I were you, I would seriously consider leveraging the personal blogs by linking to them on the website. Most people want connection and conversation over information any day.
Love the design of the Capital Campaign blog, very visual. Great concept to!
I would think that if people responded to the personal blogs (and maybe they share some testimony-esque stories from their departments), that may fill the need that an official church blog would fill.
Whatcha think?